2019: Belfast Girls by Jaki McCarrick

Belfast Girls by Jaki McCarrick.  Echo Theatre directed by Jordan Best at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, August 24-31, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 24

Cast:
Judith – Isabel Burton
Sarah – Phoebe Heath
Ellen – Joanna Richards
Hannah – Natasha Vickery
Molly – Eliza Jennings

Set Design – Chris Zuber; Lighting Design – Murray Wenham; Music and Sound Design – Peter Best; Costume Design – Anna Senior

In her article ‘The Genesis of Belfast Girls’ [ https://www.writing.ie/news/the-genesis-of-belfast-girls-by-jaki-mccarrick/ ] (January 2018) Jaki McCarrick wrote “I’m also currently developing Belfast Girls as a screenplay with help from the Irish Film Board.”

I hope this happens because Jordan Best and her well-balanced cast have shown us how intense a close-up movie of these particular five young women’s journey would be. 

In their confined accommodation well below decks for the four months it took to sail from Ireland to Australia in 1849, even with occasional brief sorties to view the never-ending sea, or to invade the space of the violent crowd next door to their private enclave, we see the clashes between social classes played out in angry argument to the point of awful physical attack.

The drama, which shows Best’s tight directing, works from the personality of each ‘girl’ growing from cover-up and self-protection to revelations which bring them together – to a new understanding.  McCarrick, of course, has provided the actors with the words they say out loud, but I imagine for each one of the actors the analysis of their characters and developing how they could express them must have been a highly emotional experience.

The result for me was as if I was looking through the camera, focussing from one face to another, from one image of an action to the next, until a kind of relief from that close-up intensity as my camera panned along the group standing on deck, ready to embark in Sydney.  Coming, ready or not.

The acting skills, and the sense of equal standing among the five actors, are at the heart of this production.  But then the set design, with its great sail, puts the small scale of the girls’ cabin into the context of the seemingly interminable voyage ‘halfway round the Earth’ as one says.  And then again there is the essential mood created by Peter Best, linking the scenes as they appear and fade – and not forgetting the literally frightening storm effect, when sound and light explode.

Only afterwards did I think, of course: this is Peter Best, film composer from Bliss, through Crocodile Dundee, to Muriel’s Wedding!  Perhaps Jaki McCarrick should be approached for her film.

The history of the Irish Potato Famine and the advantage taken by the British to transport the Irish poor and literally starving women from Belfast to Sydney to provide wives and workers is now much better known because of this play.  Jaki McCarrick’s article is an excellent read to fill out what we learn in the theatre, from when she discovers the name – Nora McCarrick, from Easkey, Sligo – among the four thousand ‘Belfast girls’ sent under Earl Grey’s so-called Orphan Emigration Scheme.

Jordan Best is to be congratulated for producing and directing this significant play.  Special thanks too to the Queanbeyan Palerang Regional Council and The Q Team Leader Stephen Pike for supporting the work of Echo Theatre.

Not to be missed.

L-R: Phoebe Heath, Isabel Burton, Joanna Richards, Eliza Jennings, Natasha Vickery
as
Sarah, Judith, Ellen, Molly, Hannah

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Shakespeare in Love - Melbourne Theatre Company

Shakespeare in Love, based on the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard; adapted for the stage by Lee Hall; music by Paddy Cunneen.  Melbourne Theatre Company production at Canberra Theatre Centre August 22-32, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 23

Michael Wahr as the musing Will Shakespeare
Photo: Limelight

The set design for Shakespeare in Love on stage is nothing less than magnificent, and the deliberately coarse acting is often Laugh Out Loud.  But LoL is not enough to sustain a full-length RomCom – too long, in fact – unless the romance is believable.  The director has done their best and the lead actors are very good, but this script fails at its heart.

Are we expected to simply find a bumbling ‘rude mechanicals’ version of London theatre in Shakespeare’s day funny?  In this view Will appears as Peter Quince, and there are several Bottoms.  But unlike in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there’s no depth in the lovers' relationship.  The writer of this script is certainly not Shakespeare.

A 'rehearsal' scene
Photo: MTC

Are we supposed to take the play as a serious condemnation of the apocryphal state of women, not only in the past but still today?  Queen Elizabeth I in this script, by forgiving Viola for performing on stage, and by performing herself as an absolute monarch, could be seen as a feminist symbol.


In real history, of course, Queen Elizabeth made Proclamations against 'excess of apparel' and gave actors (all male) special licence to wear clothes, in specified colours, to represent characters who were of a different class from that of the actor in real life.  Shakespeare in Love’s Viola would not have been forgiven.

But, as in Twelfth Night’s treatment of Malvolio, Shakespeare in Love would have to take us beyond the laughter into a deeper level of social criticism.  We would need to feel the tragedy of this Viola’s realising that she will never perform again, and must leave Will to marry the awful Wessex.  But her acceptance of such a fate for herself, and the mere quoting back to Will how his writing will make true love last forever, is just soppy romanticism.  There is just a touch in a throwaway line earlier in the play, when Shakespeare says, of course, a comedy has to have a happy ending.  But the irony of the tragic ending for this Viola, because she is a woman, barely peeks through the LoL.

Queen Elizabeth and her Court
Photo: Jeff Busby

Another approach might have been to turn the Shakespeare in Love idea into a satire.  The beginning and the end, where Shakespeare is searching for the right words for ‘Shall I Compare Thee…’ could have gone this way, perhaps.  And Daisy the Dog made me wonder.

But satire has a central component of criticism; anathema for a romcom needing a happy ending.

So apart from thoroughly enjoying the wonderful sets and their imaginative changes, and appreciating the whole team of actors for keeping it all moving, I found the play needs re-writing to give us more satisfying theatre.

Photos supplied

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Metamorphosis, adapted by Steven Berkoff

Metamorphosis, adapted by Steven Berkoff from the novella by Franz Kafka.  The Street Theatre Canberra, Street 2, August 17 – 31, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 22

A highly stylised, very stylish metaphorical Metamorphosis, this production in the studio Street Theatre 2 is just the kind of theatre I’d hope to see more often in our university town.

Through our development programs, The Street promotes the creation of high quality original performance work contributing towards a body of stage work encouraging debate on the social, economic, cultural and political relationships central to the reality of lives of Canberrans.

What I like especially about Adam Broinowski’s directing and Imogen Keen’s design is that they have achieved what Berkoff claims to aim at.  In Creating the "Berkovian" Aesthetic, Craig Rosen writes:

Berkoff aimed to convert what he saw as the bourgeois theatre of realism into a dynamic, presentational "total-theatre."  His concept of total-theatre fulfils his desire for a spiritual and psychological theatre which attempts to "illuminate" the text rather than "depict" it.  [http://www.iainfisher.com/berkoff/berkoff-study-a6.html]


With cleverly shadowed lighting by Andrew Meadows and some often startling sound effects by Kimmo Vennonen, we are taken by the actors into an absurdist-expressionist acting-out of the family of Gregor Samsa unable to cope with the reality that their perfectly normal son wakes up one morning in the form of, according to his father, a “dung beetle”: a highly appropriate translation of Kafka’s German term ungeheures Ungeziefer, considering the importance of our local dung beetle program in reducing blow flies in summer.

Steven Berkoff trained in mime at the famous Jacques Lecoq theatre school in Paris, as did Christopher Samuel Carroll some 50 years later.  Carroll has clearly passed on his particular skills and style to add to the already excellent techniques of Ruth Pieloor and Stefanie Lekkas: Mr and Mrs Samsa are equally funny and horrifying, while their daughter Greta is self-sacrificing innocent sweetness until she metamorphoses into a grown-up, and must leave her brother to his fate.

'Metamorphosis' is one of those words which fascinate, say, a 12-year-old on first acquaintance, but there’s much more to its meaning than at first appears.  Changing bodily shape is the simple literal meaning, but ‘meta’ as in words like ‘metacognition’ take the ‘morph’ into somewhere beyond the ordinary.  Dylan Van Den Berg succeeds in turning what could easily be a simple, even comic, representation of changing into a “monstrous vermin” (the usual translation), into a figure of great sadness for us.

From the psychological point of vew, Gregor’s turning into an insect physically represents his response to the stress of being the hard-working son, in a toxic workplace environment, taking on the responsibility of supporting his ageing parents and younger sister.  I have known of a case where a man under such stress needed psychiatric treatment for psychosis because he doubted that his wife existed.

The “social, economic, cultural and political” debate arises as the story becomes metaphorical.  How do we cope with those who are ‘different’ – from people with disabilities, through those with different sexual identities, to those who just look different or have a different cultural background.  As his family leave the house he had worked so hard to pay for, and leave him to a completely unknown future – as the final light fades – Gregor seemed to me just like those refugees that we have left in limbo for so many years; that we have not known what to do with.

But those dung beetles have their proper role to play.  By burying cow dung they have reduced our blow fly infestation remarkably.  This production, especially through Keen’s design of costumes, make-up and set, and Broinowski’s imaginative direction, makes us think again.

Ruth Pieloor, Stefanie Lekkas and Christopher Samuel Carroll
as Mrs Samsa, Greta Samsa and Mr Samsa
Metamorphosis at The Street, Canberra 2019

Dylan Van Den Berg as Gregor Samsa
Metamorphosis at The Street, Canberra 2019

Photos by Shelly Higgs

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht, adapted by Tom Wright

Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht, adapted by Tom Wright.  Belvoir, directed by Eamon Flack.  At Belvoir Street, Sydney, August 3 – September 15, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 10

Cast:

Ayeesha Ash – Virginia, Galileo’s daughter
Peter Carroll – Cardinal Barberini, subsequently Pope Urban VIII
Colin Friels – Galileo Galilei, a teacher of mathematics at Padua
Miranda Parker – Grand Duchess; originally in Brecht’s play, Cosimo de Medici, Grand Duke of Florence
Damien Ryan – Maculi, a supportive friend; not listed in Brecht’s play
Damien Strouthos – Ludovico Marsili, a rich young man
Vaishnavi Suryaprakash – Andrea Sarti, Galileo’s student, daughter of Galileo’s housekeeper (son, in Brecht’s play)
Sonia Todd – Vice Chancellor of Padua University; Procurator in Brecht’s play
Rajan Velu – Fulganzio; not listed in Brecht’s play but Fulgenzio Micanzio (1570 – 1654) was a supporter of Galileo

In the John Willett translation of Life of Galileo, there are 51 characters listed plus sundry Senators and men, women and children.

Designers:
Set and Costume – Zoë Atkinson; Lighting – Paul Jackson; Composer and Sound – Jethro Woodward; Choreographer – Kate Champion.

 Photos by Brett Boardman

Colin Friels as Galileo - problem solving

 Did I ever dare think that Brecht might be a tad out of date, passé perhaps?  Eamon Flack’s production of Tom Wright’s adaptation of Life of Galileo not only justifies seeing Brecht as arguably the greatest playwright of the last 100 years, but also shows Galileo as the foundation physicist of the last 400 years.

Surprisingly, we find Dr Galileo may not, strictly speaking, have been the original inventor of turning two lenses (a ‘spyglass’) into a ‘telescope’, but without his scientific imagination backed by mathematical calculation we would not have seen Prof Brian Cox showing us all that we now know about the solar system from the stills, videos and even soil samples sent back home to Earth by Explorer 1 (discovered the Van Allen radiation belts, 1958), through Galileo (first Jupiter orbiter, launched 1989), to Cassini (deliberately disposed of via a controlled fall into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, 2017) overtaken by Voyager 1 which crossed the heliopause (the outer limit of the solar system) in 2012.  [Check it all out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_artificial_satellites_and_space_probes ]

The Universe according to Ptolemy - Earth at the centre
suspended in Galileo's teaching space

 Brecht, of course, died in 1956, as space rocketry had only just begun.  As a social scientist his crucial point which this production makes so wonderfully clear, is that political power is still in the hands of those who feed people irrational falsehoods – Faith – instead of fairly feeding everyone, which requires the application of true scientific method.

Galileo faced the Papal Inquisition; we still face a Prime Minister elected by a “miracle”!

Peter Carroll as Pope Urban VIII

 The theatrical devices that make Life of Galileo work so well are first that Tom Wright’s “task was … to find a way to take a sprawling play written for at least eighteen actors and reduce it to a tighter ensemble”.  With just nine actors centred on Colin Friels as the brilliant ever-enthusiastic inventor, experimenter, teacher and, in the end, wily operator, Dr Galileo of the University of Padua, we see all 15 of Brecht’s scenes played out over 1 hour 50 minutes, no interval.

I’m sure Galileo himself would have appreciated the Okham’s Razor economy and success of what Wright calls his “concentration” of Brecht’s play.

The second highly successful device concentrates the acting space.  Belvoir Theatre has always been a more personal space than the once traditional proscenium arch stage.  One corner of the old factory floor for acting; audience mainly on two fronts looking in.

The Ensemble Theatre in Sydney, set up by Hayes Gordon before Belvoir’s time, has the audience on three sides looking into a more central space (and seeing more easily across to others in the audience).

The cast of Life of Galileo in-the-round

 For Life of Galileo, Eamon Flack sought out Zoë Atkinson to design the space – fully in-the-round.  We are all together in Dr Galileo’s teaching space with him and his students, learning what is wrong with Ptolemy’s theory of the universe.  The orbits of the stars and planets around the Earth just do not make sense.

We are there when potential sponsors look through the new technology – the telescope – and see Jupiter with moons that have never been seen before; and which are orbiting the planet!

We are in the waiting room when the news comes that the Vatican research institute, the Collegium Romanum, has confirmed Galileo’s findings that prove Copernicus was right.

And we are there waiting, too, when the news comes that the Inquisition has placed Copernicus’s teachings on the hated Index, as blasphemy.

We are in there, personally engaged in each of the key moments in Galileo’s life.  And even after his death (he died in 1642 under house arrest in Florence), we are present when his student Andrea smuggles his secret book, the ‘Discoursi’, through the border post on the way to safety in Holland.

Colin Friels as Galileo
His secretly written book Discorsi  is hidden inside a sphere
for Andrea to take through the border checkpoint.

And finally we are forever thankful for Galileo’s and Brecht’s faith in human reason, despite all our continuing failures to manage the Earth and our human societies for the better lives we all deserve.  Because we were in-the-round, there when it happened, our applause was a cheer for the future, even as Galileo’s ghost reminds us that the question to be researched is always “Why?”

And we cheer for the extraordinary effort and quality of the writing, the imagination in the design and the skills of the actors which make such powerful and valuable theatre.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Lord of the Flies - Sydney Theatre Company

Lord of the Flies adapted for the stage from William Golding’s novel by Nigel Williams.  Sydney Theatre Company directed by Kip Williams, at Roslyn Packer Theatre July 23 – August 24, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 10 Matinee 1:30pm

Cast and Creatives:

Photos by Zan Wimberley

…I see the gender of the characters as being central to the critical investigation of the work.  The characters of Lord of the Flies are all boys.  More specifically, they are all white, able bodied, and ostensibly cis gender and straight-identifying boys.  Lord of the Flies is not simply a story about “humanity”.  Rather I see it as being specifically about toxic masculine cultures.

Kip Williams

I thought that too when I first read the novel as a teenager after, at the age of seven, having been terrified when surrounded by older boys, jeering at me and challenging me to fight.

So I am glad that Kip Williams has taken the stage version out of the 1950s and brought us into today’s world of new gender understanding.

So how does he do it?

Some will love the result – especially the young.  Others will dislike the theatrical device intensely.  Let me explain.

The conception of this production involves role play at several levels.  While finding our seats, Level 1 is in play. 

The stage is open; the fluorescent backstage working lights are on; the only objects on stage are several large boxes on wheels, perhaps for props or other equipment, and a tall scaffolding tower, presumably for rigging lights.  A long piece of whitish material, maybe a couple of metres wide and reaching the floor, is hung loosely from an upstage lighting bar – as if left over from some previous set.

It appears that the stage is “dark” – that is, not being used.  Some actors, dressed in a range of non-descript ‘backstage’ clothing, wander about apparently aimlessly.  Not doing actorly warm-ups, even.

I watched for ten minutes before everyone was seated, when someone on stage began tapping on a box.  Others joined in the rhythm.  Role play Level 1 became clear: these were actors playing being actors.

They are a diverse bunch – variously ethnic and coloured, ranging from a basketball tall guy (Joseph Althouse) through middle height people and quite short, and including one disabled guy using a crutch (Daniel Monks).

In the program  I read Nyx Calder’s ‘personal note from a proud member’ of the cast – a “non-binary and transmasculine actor, artist and storyteller”.  I empathised with his experience as “victim of toxic masculinity” and sympathised with his sometimes being “seen as female, sometimes…as male, and other times I’ve been seen as a disruptive question that other people feel obliged to answer”.

But it was another Level or two before I appreciated that “Kip nor anyone else prescribed what being ‘male’ is to me, allowing my instincts and impulses to trump any preconceived notions of ‘what boys are like’."

The cast of STC's Lord of the Flies, 2019

Level 1 turned very soon in to Level 2: actors being actors playing eleven-year-old children.  The scenario seemed to be a drama group improvisation workshop such as I often have used as a teaching device. Each actor had a name of a boy from Lord of the Flies, seemingly taking on their character in whatever way they felt was right.  Being female, male, non-binary or trans was of no concern.  Ralph, Jack, Maurice, Percival and Eric were girls.  Since we were watching actors pretending to be children, it didn’t matter.

Contessa Treffone, Yerin Ha, Mia Wasikowska, Rahel Romahn and
Justin Amankwah in STC's Lord of the Flies, 2019

This morphed into a ‘workshop taken to performance level’ as the actor/children found objects to use such as the tower which became the hill on the island on which the parachutist landed (the long whitish cloth).  So we were now seeing Role Play Level 3, in which actors are playing actors who as children have been cast as characters with dialogue adapted from Lord of the Flies, with mysteriously added lighting, sound and props, including a conch shell, a pig’s head, lots of stage blood, real fire and smoke, and a great deal of mess.

The cast of STC's Lord of the Flies, 2019

Contessa Treffone, Mark Paguio, Rahel Romahn and Daniel Monks in
STC's Lord of the Flies, 2019

The cast of STC's Lord of the Flies, 2019

While drama teachers and young actors will recognise the excitement Nyx Calder describes as the “friction between actor and character” and how when “enough pieces fall into place you find yourself with bottled lightning, beautiful and unreplicable”, others (like at least one audience member I spoke to) may dislike intensely the mess and be worried about the risk of real danger – which actually occurred on this Saturday matinee.

We saw, perhaps Role Play Level minus 1, when live sparks from ashes being thrown at each other on stage flew out into Row A and the action was stopped.  While the actors left the stage as they realised with great concern what had happened, stage crew and front of house rapidly assisted a woman to leave the auditorium.

Action was re-started by the stage manager, but even with a consummate cast such as this the final twenty minutes lost a little of the energy, and was perhaps slightly less frightening and dramatically powerful than I’m sure it would have been otherwise.

Mia Wasikowska as Ralph and the cast of STC's Lord of the Flies, 2019

Rahel Romahn as Piggy in STC's Lord of the Flies, 2019

 So Kip Williams and the creative team, with this stunning array of actors, has produced a very interesting take on Golding’s original work.  I found the show highly worthwhile for its implications, often frightening, in the context of world politics today; and remarkable for being “nothing short of revolutionary for someone like me” – that is like Nyx Calder.

But not everyone will like what was a form of alienation-effect a level or two beyond anything Bertolt Brecht ever imagined.  But be brave.  You should not miss this Lord of the Flies.

The cast of STC's Lord of the Flies, 2019 - Curtain Call

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Stephen Fisher-King - Morning Melodies

Songs of The Seventies – Stephen Fisher-King.  Morning Melodies at the Queanbeyan Bicentennial Hall, Wednesday August 14, 2019, 10.30am

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Stephen Fisher-King has suitably maintained the mood of Morning Melodies, attracting a reasonable crowd on a day when it was still reading only 5 degrees as I drove home at midday.  To warm us up he began by making us laugh.  He said he could see we were all ‘blondes’.  Like the rest of us with hearing aids, I knew he really meant we were “silver-grey”, but being blondes made us all feel that much younger.

From John Denver via Olivia Newton-John and Don Maclean to Leonard Cohen, and several others in between, we were given a taster of the full-length show at 8 pm in the evening: The 70’s Unplugged.

The performance was an effective ensemble of three: Fisher-King as the central singer, guitarist and even mouth-organist, accompanied by and often passing the lead over to Di Solomon for solo songs, on guitar and piano; and to Greg Hooper on piano. 

Part of the fun became a competition as to how many awards each of them had obtained over their careers, especially in club entertainment.  I think Di won when she claimed 400!

Although the intention, suited to this occasion, was to remain upbeat and light, I thought Di’s renditions of the women singers had often a quieter strength (as did her ‘ABC News” including when women attained equal pay in 1971 – I heard someone comment “We haven’t got it yet”). 

I felt too that Stephen’s When the Music Died, and the Leonard Cohen Hallelujah (just the first four verses) sung as a duet for the encore were thoughtful arrangements and sung especially sincerely. 

But for me the most powerful performance was Stephen singing The Streets of London, after asking us if anyone knew the name of the singer-songwriter Ralph McTell.  I think no-one did, but we all remembered that sad observation:

“Have you seen the old man in the closed down market
Picking up the papers with his worn out shoes
In his eyes you see no pride and hanging loosely at his side
Yesterday’s paper, telling yesterday’s news.”

As Stephen said, growing old (at only 55 he claimed) and realising that the young carry on their lives in their own new ways, is the way life goes –

“So how can you tell me you're lonely
And say for you that the sun don't shine
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind.”

So thank you, Stephen Fisher-King, for making this moment special.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Rainbow's End by Jane Harrison

Rainbow’s End by Jane Harrison.  Moogahlin Peforming Arts directed by Liza-Mare Syron.  At Eternity Theatre, Darlinghurst Theatre Company, Sydney.  August 14 to September 1, 2019.

Bookings: (02) 8356 9987 or www.darlinghursttheatre.com

Previewed by Frank McKone
August 11

Cast: Frederick Copperwaite – government official, moneylender, cork forest figure and others; Phoebe Grainer - Dolly; Lily Shearer – Nan Dear; Lincoln Vickery – Errol; Dalara Williams - Gladys.

Designers: Production – Melanie Liertz; Sound – Phil Downing; Lighting – Karen Norris.

Stage Manager – Julia Orlando

Photos by Robert Catto

L to R: Lily Shearer, Dalara Williams, Phoebe Grainer
as
Nan Dear, her daughter Gladys and her grandaughter Dolly

Watching Rainbow’s End is like a 1950’s slide show.  Each short scene is a picture of a moment in the life of the Dear family women in the years from 1954 when the Queen of England made her Royal Visit to her British Subjects in Australia.  What a surprise in the first scene to see Gladys, daughter of Nan Dear, mother of Dolores, so excited and determined to dress up and walk all the way from her tin shack on the river flats into country town Shepparton to see the Queen.

But the Queen never saw Gladys’s home.  Officials had lined the road with a hessian fence to hide the Aboriginal settlement.  Her practical mother who sees her role as keeping things together wants to know what happened to the hessian.  But Gladys begins to change.

The slide show also reveals the unexpected story of Gladys’s youngest daughter, 17-year-old Dolores (Dolly) and Errol Fisher (Fleischer).  Dolly is ready to find her own way into a life which she deserves – with a decent house and a marriage to a decent man who loves and respects her as an equal.

Errol, almost a comic figure in his first slide appearance amateurishly selling Encyclopedia Britannica sets, turns out not to be a Fisher but a Fleischer.  His German immigrant parents had changed their name in World War II in British Empire Australia for obvious reasons.

Dalara Williams and Lincoln Vickery
as
Gladys Dear and Errol Fisher (about to persuade her to buy Encyclopedia Britannica set)

 As you watch and find yourself thinking about each scene, including those with a  threatening male figure hidden among the cork trees, and the change from a home-built tin shack to a government imposed cement slab house – but never a home – it’s clear the play is made for discussion, and it makes very good sense that it is included in the Higher School Certificate list for classroom study.

Phoebe Grainer, Frederick Copperwaite, Lincoln Vickery
as
Dolly Dear, Threatening Figure, Errol Fisher

Nan Dear and Gladys
"cement slab house – but never a home"

 The original production of this play, by the Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-op, directed by Wesley Enoch, took place at Shepparton in 2005, but since then there seems to have been only one other professional staging, at Riverside Theatre, Parramatta, and on tour in 2011, directed by Craig Ilott.  Jane Harrison won the 2012 Drover Award at this time.

It seems to me that we all, Indigenous, immigrant or whatever sort of Australian we are, should see this Moogahlin production – especially teachers and young people – because as the decades go along the issues of cultural differences never go away.  Attitudes have changed since 1954, perhaps, and the special value of this production in the friendly atmosphere of the intimate Eternity Theatre is that you come to appreciate the complexities of living in and between cultures; and seeing that positive outcomes are possible.

I think it is also important for non-Aboriginal people to understand the place of this play in the Australian theatre scene.

Liza-Mare Syron has a family history going back particularly to her uncle Brian Syron, who was such an important figure in the establishment of the Black Theatre in Redfern, Sydney in the early 1970s.  Her clan is Biripi, linked way back through the Eora people from long before the British invasion in 1788 and Captain Cook’s landing further south at Botany Bay in 1770.  The Queen’s Royal Visit, and the power Elizabeth II still represents in 2019, has a significance in First Nations history quite different from, say, my own immigrant history including going to Enfield (that is ‘End Field’) Grammar School established by Queen Elizabeth I in 1555 for the middle-class of her day, near the forests where she would go hunting.

Jane Harrison is a Muruwari woman related to the people who built the ancient engineered fish traps in the Barwon River at Brewarrina, far to the north-west of the Eora people, and was brought up in Yorta Yorta country in Victoria.  Rainbow’s End and this production of the play represents the expansion of Aboriginal modern theatre-making across the cultures of the many First Nations peoples – some 600 language groups in Australia and the Torres Strait Islands.

Take the opportunity, then, to see Rainbow’s End: to appreciate others’ experiences, to think about the implications, and to imagine a new future for our country.  Just take on board Gladys’s speech in the final scene.

Dalara Williams and cast

Gladys speaks

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: The Art of Coarse Acting - Canberra Repertory Society

The Art of Coarse Acting: Best of British.

Canberra REP presents an Amateur production by Arrangement with ORIGIN Theatrical on behalf of Samuel French Ltd of six plays, at Theatre 3, July 25 – August 10, 2019:

Streuth by Michael Green
A Collier’s Tuesday Tea by Michael Green
Present Slaughter by Jane Dewey
Stalag 69 by Michael Green
Pride at Southanger Park by Rubert Bean
Trapped by Michael Green

As performed by Poon River Players, directed by Steph Roberts, written by Alexandra Pelvin, stage manager Liz St Clair Long.

The Ensemble Cast in 46 roles:
Damon Baudin                 Victoria Dixon
Glen Brighenti                 Marni Mount
Michael Cooper               Alexandra Pelvin
Patrick Galen-Mules        Steph Roberts
Cole Hilder                       Liz St Clair Long
Thomas Hyslop                Meaghan Stewart
Arran McKenna              Jo Zaharias
Nick Steain

Audience Alert:
This production contains some adult themes and an overload of chaos.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 27

I was encouraged in this endeavour by Steph Roberts, in her role as Director of Poon River Players, outing my presence as a Canberra Critics’ Circle reviewer, to cheers from the audience, and presenting me with a Poon River Players ball-point pen, obviously with the intention I should write a positive review.

I take up that ball-point as follows.

I had an enjoyable evening and recommend to Canberrans to see this show, which becomes a blur of acting bloopers and staging disasters done just for the fun of being silly.

It brought back memories from my years in amateur theatre of exactly these sorts of things happening.  These are the memories of funny moments which I’m sure keep Canberra REP together, and made this show of deliberate disasters enjoyable.

Though titled by the Poon River Players “Best of British” the six plays chosen from the Coarse Acting competitions, festivals and World Coarse Acting Championships are, from my background cultural experience, quite specifically English, rather than British.  The Scots, the Welsh and the Irish were never quite as silly.  The English by 1964, when Green had already written The Art of Coarse Rugby and then The Art of Coarse Acting, had been accustomed to the Goon Show on radio since 1951 (when the BBC at first would not use the name Goon and called it “Crazy People”); later came Monty Python’s Flying Circus with Graham Chapman, John Cleese et al and The Goodies with Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden from 1969-1970.

So the Poon River Players from some vague part of North Queensland (Yepoon?) on their first Australasian Tour have done the tradition proud.  They have not pretended to be sophisticated, or perhaps they have pretended not to be sophisticated.  It’s hard to tell the difference.  That’s the point of coarse acting.  It’s silly for the sake of being silly, even though we know that it’s actually hard work to do it deliberately.

Streuth is a Vicar of Dibley scene with a dead body and Agatha Christie style mystery story.

Photos by Helen Drum

Rear: Jo Zaharias, Glenn Brighenti, Thomas Hyslop
Front: Arran McKenna, Michael Cooper
as
Mrs D'Arcy, Hubert D'Arcy, James
The Inspector, The Vicar

A Collier’s Tuesday Tea has a large kitchen table for the whole family to support when its legs fall off.

Rear: Nick Steain, Victoria Dixon, Glenn Brigheti, Patrick Galen-Mules
Arran McKenna, Cole Hilder; Floor: Marni Mount
as
Daniel Obadiah Hepplethwaite, Ida Hepplethwaite, Albert Hepplethwaite, Lionel Headbracket
Joe Clegghorn, P.C. Clement Boothroyd
Victoria Hepplethwaite

Present Slaughter is a romance of Noel Coward sophisticates made difficult with stiff upper lips as the gentleman accidentally cuts a major artery and slowly dies.

Standing: Jo Zaharias, Thomas Hyslop, Cole Hilder
Not standing: Meaghan Stewart
as
Lavinia, Antoine, Oliver
Mimi

In Stalag 69 (not the 1953 American comic war movie Stalag 17), the British prisoner faces walls, a window, a door and a grille which in the first performance attempt are upside down and back to front.  In the second attempt, the walls are righted but un-nerve the actors with more unfortunate results.

Damon Baudin as Squadron Leader Crawford

Pride at Southanger Park never quite makes it into the Jane Austen society drama it appears to be.

 Above: Jo Zaharias, Nick Steain, Alexandra Pelvin, Glenn Brighenti, Marni Mount, Arran McKenna
Below, as stage revolves: Patrick Galen-Mules, Michael Cooper, Marni Mount, Arran McKenna
as
Mrs Squires, Sir Thomas Bottomly, Lady Fanny Bottomly, William Squires, Cecily Chichester,
and Reverand [sic] Giles Henry
Below: Actor caught backstage smoking, Marcus D'Angelo, Cecily Chichester, Reverand [sic] Giles Henry

Trapped is the classic “there’s a murderer among us but all the doors are locked” mystery – except, at the very least, the set construction fails to keep them in.  (Photo not available)

There are absolutely no serious implications to be made.  The plays fail to be satires, or comedies with recognisable plots, or even slapstick farces.  The plots that may be imagined fall apart; the characters’ relationships never develop; all that remains are actors trying to keep up appearances until even they give up the ghost.  We are still laughing at the end even though there’s nothing much left to laugh at.

And that’s a success, for that’s what The Art of Coarse Acting is all about.  Well done, Canberra REP.  The Best of British to you (well…English, anyway).

The last question is about production values.  Certainly the costumes and make-up looked very much like those in the pictures in Michael Green’s book.  The lighting was bright and the sound was loud.  The revolve revolved when it should have, that is when it shouldn’t have, according to Coarse Stage expectations.  The set fell apart and was put in place as it should, during the action, and while Director Steph Roberts frantically tried to keep our attention as she explained the situation between scenes.  Costume changes seemed to take place as smoothly as can be expected.  And Liz St Clair Long was as grumpy as any Stage Manager I’ve come across.

Everything went wrong as it should and, as far as I could tell (though it might be hard to tell), nothing went wrong as it shouldn’t.  Enjoy!

Jo Zaharias, Liz St Clair Long, Steph Roberts and Meaghan Stewart
keeping our attention

© Frank McKone, Canberra